This is a story about one of Rhode Island’s notable moments, and gifts to the world. It happened 223 years ago and is being commemorated in Newport today by the governor, both senators and a U.S. Supreme...

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Posted Aug. 18, 2013 @ 12:01 am

This is a story about one of Rhode Island’s notable moments, and gifts to the world.

It happened 223 years ago and is being commemorated in Newport today by the governor, both senators and a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

But the story starts far away, on Chicago’s south side, in the home where I grew up, surrounded by an unlikely type of art on the walls.

Framed prints of George Washington’s life.

They were big, dramatic images. You’ve probably seen them elsewhere. Washington on horseback, at Valley Forge and crossing the Delaware — and dozens more.

They were on every wall of our house. I took them for granted, but visitors were amazed at how many we had.

My dad would explain that after buying the first few, he got caught up in collecting. Plus, he was just into George Washington. Some founders, he says, may have been more learned, like Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison — but Washington was the essential American figure.

Yet there was a deeper reason he worshiped Washington. I never knew about it growing up, but it had to do with what’s happening today in Newport. And the gift Rhode Island gave the world.

My dad mentioned the reason a few times, but to be honest, I didn’t know the details until I called him the other day to ask.

It was the late 1950s, he said. I was probably 5 or so at the time. He and my mom had come to New England in October to see the fall foliage. It was just the two of them.

During that same trip, they decided to drive to Newport to tour the mansions. While there, they made a stop at Touro Synagogue, the country’s oldest.

It was partly for personal reasons. My dad’s parents had immigrated to America around the turn of the century. “Fled” would be a better word. They’d lived in a Russian “shtetl” — a Jewish village like the one in “Fiddler on the Roof.” It was the time of pogroms — anti-Semitic attacks on such villages.

So my dad’s parents left, coming to America for the same reason most immigrants did at the time — to flee some kind of oppression. Especially the religious kind.

My father was born here, and grew up Americanized. He was sometimes embarrassed when his mom would speak Yiddish in front of his friends.

“Ma,” he’d say, “talk nice.”

But he remembers his father flying an America flag from their home.

It’s how many immigrants feel about our freedoms. My dad picked up some of that, too. Those who suffered government-sponsored religious oppression elsewhere have a special appreciation for this country.

But there’s a secret about such folks, especially “ghetto Jews” from shtetls like my grandparents. The fear of oppression is always in them, and not just because of day-to-day bigotry. It’s that on some level, they wonder if America itself really accepts them — if tolerance was built into its DNA.

Even my dad wasn’t sure. Like many who were born here, he still felt the anxiety of ghetto Jews. Minorities of many faiths and races in America feel the same in the context of their own backgrounds.

And then came the day my father stopped by Touro Synagogue.

And saw something he hadn’t known about.

He saw that George Washington had visited the congregation in 1790, and afterward wrote an extraordinary letter that reflected Rhode Island’s own founding principle of religious freedom.

Like all U.S. schoolchildren, my dad of course knew Washington helped establish the principles of a free nation. But you have to understand the mentality of the “shtetl” to realize the impact of seeing that the first president specifically wrote a Jewish congregation to declare they were as inherently American as any class or background.

The letter’s key phrase stood out to my dad as it stands out now as Washington’s most celebrated observation on tolerance.

I’ll compress the phrase slightly so it stands alone:

“… happily,” Washington wrote, “the Government of the United States … gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

Later in the famous letter, Washington added this: “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

This day in Newport, the letter will be read in full, in a tradition that has now been carried out for 66 years. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan will give an address, with remarks by U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and Governor Chafee.

I had known that Washington’s visit, and subsequent letter, further shaped America’s commitment to tolerance.

But I never knew until the other day how fully a moment in Newport in 1790 — and another there in the late 1950s — shaped my own father’s esteem for George Washington.

And made the first president an icon around me as I grew up on the south side of Chicago.

The 66th annual reading

of the George Washington letter will take place at Touro Synagogue at 1 p.m. today. Synagogue seating is at capacity but overflow seating with simulcast may be available. For details, call (401) 847-4794, ext. 207.